Embarrassing Real Estate

Baedeker calls Paddington "uninteresting," but a lot of people sniping at the Church of England have recently made London's northwest district the most embarrassingly lively parish in Britain. For much of the borough is a red-light district, much of its land is Church-owned.

Last week the Church issued a booklet which explained this peculiar fact.

The Church, says the pamphlet, does "not receive rents from houses in Paddington" although it owns the land which "was many years ago let on leases to tenants who have in many cases sublet." Unfortunately, the Church has "no control whatever over the landlords, though [it has] made repeated efforts to obtain legal powers [but] Parliament is not willing to revolutionize the whole law of property to meet one particular hardship."

Far from condoning the evil, the Church strives to eradicate it: It refuses to renew leases upon expiration "without satisfactory safeguards against the property being put to immoral use." What is more, the Church is "forgoing some -L-5,000 [$20,000] a year income" by such refusals. But Church officials will not sell or give away the land because that "would simply be ridding [the Church] of the direct stigma of responsibility without any assurance that the evil would cease."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.